This section provides details for the Dakar conference, including the papers presented. Also, we will report live from the conference as it happens with daily updates on the progress of the working groups, and we plan to webcast the key sessions of the conference live. Use the sub menu for further details.
The Dakar conference has now finished. We will continue to update this website and related sites, such as our YouTube channel and flickr. The webcast recordings, papers, and further information is available from the D-Conference page.
Safaa El-Kogali, Regional Director West Asia/North Africa, Population Council, and Malak Zaalouk, Regional Education Advisor, UNICEF Middle East/North Africa, revisit key issues from Safaa’s presentation at the plenary on violence, 18 May 2010 at 14:00.
Their discsussion highlights, among other things, violence against girls in conflict affected areas and the protecive role of education.
Elizabeth King, Sector Director for Education in the Human Development Network at the World Bank, talks about her keynote address given at the E4 Conference in Dakar on Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 8.30am.
You can watch the full session recording, and hear more voices from Dakar on our youtube channel.
Today we are continuing to report live from Dakar. The first plenary is now underway, and you can follow it live from the link below or watch the recording later: www.e4conference.org/dakar
This morning’s plenary is on Quality Education for Equality, with Mr Gianfranco Rotigliano, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Mr Albert Motivans, Head, Education Indicators and Data Analysis, UNESCO Institute of Statistics, and Ms Codou Diaw, UNGEI GAC member and Executive Director, Forum for African Woman Educationalists.
This afternoon, we will have a plenary on Expanding Opportunities, with UNGEI GAC members Ms Nitya Rao and Mr Alfie Hamid, Ms Awa N’Deye Ouedraogo, Ms Hege Mertyberg and Ms Susan Durston.
The opening cermony for UNGEI’s global E4 conference in Dakar: “Engendering Empowerment: Education and Equality” combined a solid commitment to global goals eg. the gender components of Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Speakers returned again and again to the significance of the meeting ten year ago when the Dakar Programme for Action on EFA was adopted and UNGEI was launched because of the high numbers of girls out of school. Senegal’s achievement in enrolling large number sof girls in school was affirmed
by Senegal’s minister of pre-school, primary and lower secondary education and national languages, Mr. Kalidou Diallo, and Senegal’s prime minister Mr. Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye. The promise of schooling for girls all over the world was the wish of the Senegalese singer – Coumba Gawlo and the Femi Oke, Nigerian journalist and Mistress of Ceremony. But the size of the challenge of bringing of giving good education to the many millions of girls who are denied what Graça Machel called ‘Knowledge as a weapon for a better life’ was emphasised by Anthony Lake – UNICEF’s new Executive Director. Ann Therese Ndong Jatta, the Director of UNESCO’s regional bureau for education in Africa, talked about the need to go beyond the lip service often given to girls education, and to think about how to build a new humanism in which women and men can co-operate to change the attitudes of discimination. Anthony Lake called us to imagine a world where UNGEI’s work was done, and girls’ education rights had been achieved. The spirit of Kofi Annan ten years ago was in the room when he had called EFA a test we must pass. For the millions of girls still out of school or experiencing inequality within, we have not yet done well enough.
